Laura Linney

Laura Linney, in full Laura Leggett Linney, (born February 5, 1964, New York, New York, U.S.), American actress best known for playing strong yet vulnerable characters.

Linney was born into a theatrical family; her father was the playwright Romulus Linney. She graduated from Brown University in 1986 and later studied at the Arts Theatre School in Moscow and graduated from the Juilliard School (M.F.A.) in New York City in 1990. She immediately began performing on Broadway, eventually earning praise for her roles in Six Degrees of Separation and Hedda Gabler.

Linney began her film career with a small part in Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), followed by a role in the comedyDave (1993). In 1993 she also appeared in Tales of the City, the television miniseries based on Armistead Maupin’s book. Her breakthrough came in 1996 when she starred opposite Richard Gere in the film Primal Fear, a thriller that revolves around the murder of an archbishop. This led to starring roles in other movies, including Absolute Power (1997)—in which she portrayed the daughter of a man (played by Clint Eastwood) who is framed for a murder involving the president—and the comedy-drama The Truman Show (1998).

At the beginning of the 21st century, Linney’s acting began to receive widespread praise. For her portrayal of a single mom in You Can Count on Me (2000), she was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress. She won Emmy Awards for roles in the sitcom Frasier (2002), the television movie Wild Iris (2004), and the HBO miniseries John Adams (2008). In 2005 Linney earned a second Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actress, for her performance as the freethinking wife of the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in Kinsey (2004). In the quirky dramaThe Squid and the Whale (2005), she starred as a promising writer dealing with a messy divorce in 1980s Brooklyn.

Linney subsequently appeared in the comedy Man of the Year (2006) and the FBI thriller Breach (2007). In 2007 she also portrayed a playwright still reeling from her dysfunctional childhood in The Savages, for which she was nominated for a third Academy Award. Her later roles included a confidante of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) in Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) and the housekeeper of an aged Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) in Mr. Holmes (2015). Her credits from 2016 include the action spectacle Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows; Sully, about US Airways flight 1549, which crash-landed in the Hudson River; and Tom Ford’s thriller Nocturnal Animals. Linney then was cast in The Dinner (2017), an adaptation of Herman Koch’s novel about two couples’ response to their children’s involvement in a horrific crime.

Linney continued to perform onstage, garnering Tony Award nominations for her roles in The Crucible (2002), Sight Unseen (2004), Time Stands Still (2010), and The Little Foxes (2017). In 2010–13 she starred as a high-school teacher stricken by cancer in the television dramedy series The Big C on the cable channel Showtime. She won a Golden Globe Award for the role in 2011 and an Emmy Award in 2013. Linney’s later TV work included the Netflix series Ozark (2017– ), in which she portrayed the wife of a money launderer working for a drug cartel.